


Particle-Wave Duality

by whatthefoucault



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Deadpool - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Baking, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Mid-Credits Scene, Coffee, Depression, Dreams, Gay Bucky Barnes, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Pining, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sleepy Cuddles, Stucky - Freeform, Underage Drinking, Wakanda, quantum physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:44:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8371036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatthefoucault/pseuds/whatthefoucault
Summary: While Bucky is napping, Steve reads to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between the last two chapters of [Notes from a Dirty Attic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7410154/chapters/16831270), though you don't need to have read it.
> 
>  
> 
> [It also has a killer soundtrack.](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/post/152259796771/whilst-writing-particle-wave-duality-i-kind-of)

Sunday

"Hey Buck."

Steve settled into the comfortable chair, just as he did every evening. This time, he had brought with him a warm cup of coffee and a new book. He let out a short, heavy sigh.

"Listen, you've got to promise not to make fun of me for this," he said, "but this tiny little fly just dove straight into my mouth just as I was taking a breath walking in the park this morning, went right down my throat, and I choked so badly that I threw up on the sidewalk, right in front of a nursing home. I've never been so embarrassed. Sam said it was hands down the grossest thing he'd ever seen. I'm never going to live this down, man. But how was your day?"

Bucky was as silent as always, almost eerily still behind the glass of the chamber where he slept. Steve took a sip of his coffee. It was smooth and strong, though Steve always took it with milk and sugar.

"You know, it's a real chore having to carry both sides of the conversation all the time," he said. "I remember when it was all I could do to get you to shut up. Now, nothing. What I wouldn't give for the occasional laconic grunt at this point. It's pretty fucking rude, pal - "

Steve choked slightly on the last word. He had promised not to let Bucky see him upset. He straightened himself, and opened his book.

"Okay, so stop me if you've read this one already," he began. "Chapter One: particle-wave duality? Jesus, man, I hope you're taking notes..."

Monday

It was best to run just as day was breaking, when the air was still fresh and unburdened by the humidity and warmth of the day. Steve knew very well that his body and his lungs could handle the heavy air of the daytime, but he never did abandon the habit of keeping a blue inhaler in his pocket, just in case. The scent and texture of the air was perfect at dawn, and Steve relished the last lingering trace of the night blooms' fragrance that teased its way though the crisp morning fog. Steve ran before the country began to wake, as the cities hit their snooze buttons and the coffee farmers were at breakfast. He ran until his thoughts were no more than the air in his lungs and the rhythmic tapping of his feet hitting the ground, reaching forward and forward. There was a moment, just before he turned back to cool down, to shower and eat softly-scrambled eggs and go about the day, a moment when the momentum, the sheer force of will to keep going overrode the fatigue that hummed deep in his bones. In that moment, it felt as though he would keep going forever through no effort of his own. He closed his eyes, and it was almost as though he was flying. He felt free. Steve would tell Bucky about his runs in the evening. Bucky never had anything to say, but at least he was there.

He ran alone; not because there were no others to keep him company - there was not exactly a shortage of friends - but because it allowed him the closest he felt to escaping the oppressive influence of his thoughts. He ran because his body grew restless if left to keep still for too long, as though it was now unsure what to do with itself with no training to undertake, no missions to prepare for, and no glorified frisbee to practice throwing around.

As for his mind, idleness of this kind did not suit him. It was a different idleness to that which used to come with being sick. Then, unlike now, there was little he could do, at least physically, and this brought with it a sort of resignation to doing sitting-down things until it blew over. It was not as though he had never had to suffer the vague, almost boring sense of indefinite waiting before, however; indeed, there had been plenty of times, especially in the war, and after, when one was always on alert, never knowing when a shitstorm would descend and idleness would turn to chaos. He could say with some certainty that they were safe here, but he could not shake the heavy veil of uneasiness draping itself over the situation.

Sometimes, Steve brought company when he read to Bucky.

"Hey asshole, now might be a good time to buck the fuck up and thaw out," said Sam, tapping on the glass like a child with a goldfish bowl. "Your boyfriend is sad and frankly it's making him a lot less fun to hang out with."

"Come on, Sam. And I'm not his boyfriend," said Steve, batting Sam's hand away from the glass.

Sam studied Steve's face for what seemed like a very, very long time.

"Okay," he said, with an apparently satisfied nod.

"What?" protested Steve.

"I just said okay," said Sam.

Steve tugged at his shirt sleeve, and carefully rubbed the fingerprints Sam had left from the glass, before sitting down in his usual chair beside Bucky. An amiable silence sat between them.

"But if he asked you to be his boyfriend, you'd be like, yup," said Sam.

"I'd... shut up," said Steve. He hoped he was not blushing. He was probably blushing. Steve's face had the terrible habit of blushing when he absolutely did not want it to. "Would you just... he's _right there_."

"Okay," said Sam.

Tuesday

Steve was so engrossed in his reading that he barely noticed when the door slid open quietly.

"... and on this panel, we see a dingy back alley in the city, but it looks like something's torn a hole between the dream and the real world," he said, holding the page up for Bucky to see. "A weird little creature manages to poke through, but then - "

"Hey Steve," said Wade, giving an awkward wave as he shuffled into the room. "What are you reading?"

"Hey Wade," said Steve, setting down his book. Wade. Deadpool. Deadpool was here. It took a moment for Steve to register. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Had the day off, thought I'd pop by and see my favourite unfairly beautiful very best friend," Wade replied, setting down a large backpack at his feet.

"How the hell did you find me?" Steve was worried. If Wade had found him, and he most definitely had not spoken to Wade since before all of this had kicked off, he could not help but wonder who else might find them, and whether they might not be so welcome.

"A little bird told me," Wade shrugged, perching himself on the edge of a table with the casual air of a community college political science teacher.

"... Redwing?"

"Well," said Wade, "I was helping Aunt Darlene sort through the garage to find donations for her neighbourhood yard sale. She said she'd asked Sam first, not that I was disappointed that I was only her second choice or anything, but that he said he was out of town on business, then your name came up and I realised that you'd missed six consecutive Taco Tuesdays, which, let's be honest, really isn't like you, so I asked where you guys were. She said it was classified, but he'd said the humidity was worse than back in DC, but the coffee was better. I put it together from there."

"Dare I ask how you got past security?" asked Steve.

"I knocked on the front door," replied Wade.

"I... okay," said Steve, because sometimes, with Wade, it was just easier.

"So what kind of mayhem can we get up to on a Tuesday night in Wakanda?" asked Wade. "Nice beard, by the way."

Steve ran a hand over his chin without thinking. He had lost count of the number of days since he had bothered to shave.

"We were reading comic books tonight," he replied. "Wade, meet Bucky."

Bucky was still, and quiet, and did not say hello. Wade hopped off the table, bounding toward Bucky's chamber.

"Hi Bucky," he said with a friendly wave, peering curiously through the glass. Bucky did not reply. "I take it he's the strong, silent type? Either he's beyond laconic, or he's stunned into silence by my beauty."

Steve sighed. "Bucky's in stasis while they figure out how to help him," he said. Wade clapped a hand softly on his shoulder.

"Stasis is weird," he said. "Listen, Bucky - can I call you Bucky? I'll take that as a yes, then. Bucky, as Steve's best friend, and therefore your best friend too, I promise I'll keep you in the loop on all of the important TV shows you'll be missing while you're taking a nap."

Steve let out a soft chuckle in spite of himself. "That's really sweet of you, Wade," he said.

"At least I hope he's not going to be out for another 70 fucking years," shrugged Wade. "Remember, I'm still not done with _your_ education, young padawan. I have an entire powerpoint presentation on post-punk waiting for your back in New York."

Steve nodded. It was hard to think about post-punk now. But Wade was a good friend. Steve wished more people could see that.

"Wade, do... do you think it's possible to be in love with someone, and not realise that's what you are, until later?" he asked. Asking felt stupid.

"I'm struggling really hard right now not to assume this is your way of telling me you've been in love with me all along," said Wade, shuffling a little closer to him. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Steve, I really value our friendship."

Steve shook his head. "Him," he said, feeling that little swell of warmth in his chest he always got when he talked about Bucky.

"Oh, _he's_ your it's complicated," nodded Wade.

"He's my it's complicated," said Steve, his gaze unfixed toward the ceiling. "I mean, you know we've been best friends since almost as far back as I can remember. A few years ago, I thought he'd died, but then, eventually, we found each other again. There's so much more, so much has happened, and I don't ever want to lose him again."

"He's hot," said Wade. "He's a smoking hot man-bear, Steve. Like, the things I would gladly let that man do to me, but won't, out of respect for our friendship. Does he know he's your it's complicated?"

"I don't know." Lately, it seemed like perhaps he knew nothing at all. "It's... fuck me, it's complicated. I'm... I know I'm not always great at this emotional stuff."

"Yeah, no shit," said Wade. "Listen, I'm probably the last person who should be giving advice about love, but that doesn't stop me from dispensing it. Promise me you'll talk to the guy when he's awake. For one thing, he's probably just as hopelessly devoted to you as you are to him, and for another, you're a lot more fun to hang out with when you're not depressed."

Steve drew a deep breath. "Promise," he said.

"Hug it out?" asked Wade.

"Yeah, okay," he agreed.

"That's the spirit," said Wade, folding Steve into his arms. "There we go, give ol' Deadpool some sugar."

Steve could feel the tension bleeding from his shoulders and his back; indeed, it had insinuated itself so heavily into his muscles and his bones that he did not realise how much of it he had been carrying with him for so long. Wade's suit smelled oddly of marshmallows. Exactly like marshmallows. Steve did not know how it was possible for someone to smell this much like marshmallows. 

"I have something that might lift your spirits," whispered Wade.

"Should I be scared?" asked Steve. Wade being Wade, it could have been anything.

"Netflix Wakanda has all of _Star Trek_ ," said Wade, pulling a laptop and a large bag of kettle corn from his backpack. "Does Bucky like _Star Trek_?"

"I think he would," said Steve, smiling. "How about we find him something with a lot of Klingons?"

Wednesday

Steve did not want to admit to Bucky that he had been too distracted to absorb much of anything they had read about quantum physics, and hoped that Bucky was not too impatient for the next few chapters of the book; instead, Steve elected to turn his attention to drawing that evening. He gently traced out the familiar curve of Bucky's nose with soft pencil strokes, but the pressure was too light and the pencil too dull.

"It's nice not listening to you complain about having to keep still for once," he told Bucky, shading in the little dark spray of stubble over his soft jawline, "but I'm going to get tired of drawing this one pose pretty quickly."

Steve lost himself most easily when he was working with his hands: sometimes this took the form of a good cathartic session hitting the bag in the gym, but sometimes, quieter times, he drew. Sometimes, when he drew, time got away from him. A sudden grating buzz in his pocket yanked him from his slow ruminations. He had a text message from Natasha.

_GO TO SLEEP, STEVE._

Steve puzzled at the text.

_How did you know I was awake?_

_An educated guess. Now go. To. SLEEP._

_Fine. Night, Nat._

_Night, Steve._

Five minutes later, Steve's phone buzzed again, a call this time.

"I swear to god, Rogers, what part of GO TO SLEEP did you not understand?" said Natasha.

"How did you know I didn't go to sleep?" asked Steve. "How do you know I wasn't just about to drift off?"

"I know you, meatball," countered Natasha. "Look, I know how much Barnes means to you. Do you really think he'd want you exhausting yourself? Come on."

"But I miss him," said Steve, and his voice felt so small.

"I know," she said. "But you still need to sleep. Okay?"

"Okay," he conceded. "Night, Nat."

"Night, kiddo," she said. "Take care of yourself."

But Steve's limbs were too heavy and too warm to move themselves from his chair, so he curled himself in as small as he could, and drifted into unsettled sleep.

Thursday

On some days, Steve was there in the daytime as well as the evening, quietly keeping Bucky company as doctors milled around him, taking readings and making adjustments, and installing essential updates before rebooting.

They started on chapter six. Steve held the next page up to the glass. "And then the author's used another diagram," he told Bucky.

"You know he cannot see the diagrams while he is in stasis," observed T'Challa, staring thoughtfully into Bucky's chamber.

"That's why I'm describing them to him," replied Steve. "Don't listen to His Majesty, Buck. There's a wiggly line, but then a second line that's not quite as wiggly as the first. If I'm reading this right, the author says that this represents - "

"He cannot hear you in stasis either," said T'Challa.

"With all due respect, your majesty, what if he can?" asked Steve.

"Even if he were not in an unconscious state, the glass that comprises the chamber is such that the acoustics would be - "

"I know, but what if he can?" Steve asked again, insistent.

T'Challa frowned, then nodded. 

"Captain Rogers, I have the best people doing everything they can to help Mr. Barnes," T'Challa told him, resting a hand on his shoulder in sympathy. "I promise you are the first person we would tell as soon as he is ready to wake up, and you do know, if there's anything I can do, as a friend..."

"There is one thing," said Steve, after a moment's reflection. "Do you know anywhere that sells prune compote?"

Friday

Eggs, sugar, oil, orange zest - how much orange zest? Steve checked the recipe again. He was, it was fair to say, out of his element.

One teaspoon. That was easy. Steve tipped the spoonful of little aromatic orange flecks into the mixture, and began to whisk them together. He was not sure that their old bakery had used orange zest, but he was sure it would be a welcome addition.

"You sure you don't want a hand?" asked Sam, watching with barely-concealed amusement from the other side of the kitchen.

"Not much for you to do until it's time to roll it out," said Steve, tipping the flour mixture into the other bowl, and slowly bringing it together with a wooden spoon. "I hope I've got the recipe right. When we were still at school, we'd scrape together what pocket change we could, and if we had enough on the Friday, we'd go to this one little bakery if we could get there before sundown, and we'd always get these cookies. They were Bucky's favourite."

"That's sweet, man. So, you want to go for a swim or something?" he asked.

"I should keep an eye on it," replied Steve, pressing his fingers slowly into the mixture, and feeling the soft crumbs forming a solid dough beneath his hands.

"The cookie dough's not going anywhere." Sam was giving him that I'm-100%-done-with-you face Steve seemed to find himself the recipient of a lot lately.

Steve sighed. "Coffee?" he suggested. Sam nodded. Steve slid the dough into the freezer to rest a few minutes, and set the angular metal coffee pot onto the stove. "You know, for all the advanced tech in this place, the coffee pot looks exactly like the one Bucky and I used to use in our old place."

"That must have been nice," Sam mused, unhooking two mugs from the stand. "I mean, I know you two didn't have much back then, so I can see the appeal of a good cup of coffee after a long day's hunting and gathering."

"Bucky always liked a hot ovaltine at night," said Steve, pointedly ignoring Sam's comment, listening to the coffee pot quietly bubbling away.

"Seriously?" asked Sam. "Ovaltine is just _wrong_."

"Bucky liked it," said Steve. Those evenings together were always such a comfort: most nights they would listen to the radio, sometimes music, sometimes whatever serial was running at the time. Steve would scribble figures and scenes into his sketchbooks, and Bucky would read.

"Look, I'm really sorry, but Bucky is super wrong on this one," said Sam, shaking his head. Steve carefully poured out two mugs of coffee, passing one to Sam. "This - this, on the other hand, is the business. Like _damn_ , Wakanda, why have you been holding out on us all this time?"

"It's pretty good," said Steve, unwrapping the cool dough and setting it in the centre of the marble countertop. "There should be a round cutter in the drawer; if you cut out the circles, I'll fill them with the jam."

"I am seriously questioning this man's taste. Ovaltine? Prune cookies? This guy is literally my grandpa."

"You do have one thing in common, you know," said Steve, gently pressing the rolling pin forward and back, feeling the dough give way and spread out and down into a large, flat oval.

"Oh yeah?" asked Sam.

"You're both my friends." Steve could not help but smile.

"And that's a decision I question the wisdom of on almost a daily basis," said Sam, rolling up his sleeves. "Now, how many circles of dough do I need to get out of this?"

\---

"Don't tell me," Steve sighed, "after all that work, you're not even hungry."

Bucky said nothing. Steve sat down with his plate of jammy triangles, and decided to see what one would be like if he dunked it in his ovaltine.

"You're missing out, pal," he told Bucky, mouth half-full of crumbling biscuit. "Bet you didn't even know I could bake. Neither did I. Turns out Captain fucking America's full of surprises."

Steve thought it might be a useful exercise - or if not, at least an exercise in only the most minimal of self-torment - to sketch out some things Bucky might remember from before the war. He let his mind's eye drift to the familiar scene of their neighbourhood, and the apartment he shared with his mother before she died: it was modest, and drafty, and the winter left mildew marks where the condensation accumulated around the window frames, but they were happy. As Steve marked out the little crack in the sidewalk on the corner that the city never did get around to fixing, he found himself absently humming a tune he had not thought of in years.

It was the first time Steve had ever been well and properly under the influence. He remembered stumbling to Bucky's building, feet tripping over themselves as though he were being propelled forward by a force beyond his own, and launching headfirst into a serenade.

"Buckaroo Barnes, won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight," he sang, loudly and no doubt not quite in tune, "Buckaroo Barnes, won't you come out tonight, aaaaaand dance by the liiiiiiight of the mooooooooon."

Bucky was at the front door like a shot, his expression none too pleased.

"Stevie?" he squinted. "Jesus, pal, what the hell do you think you're doing? It's after Becca's bedtime, and, hell, it's just about my bedtime too."

"Who cares?" said Steve, tugging at Bucky's sleeves, pulling him out of the door. "There's a whole city out there just waiting for us! Let's walk over the bridge and find a diner we've never been to and have at least three kinds of pie! Buckaroo Barnes, won't you come out toniiiight - "

"What the hell have you been drinking, huh?" asked Bucky.

"Did you know the Botticelli sisters make their own wine?" grinned Steve. The Botticelli sisters (whom Steve suspected were not sisters at all) had been living on the top floor of their walkup for as long as anyone could remember, their modest home a warm and colourful space, with well-tended plants taking up nearly every horizontal surface and the smell of aromatic beef ragu, or sometimes lovely lemony cakes, permeating every room. It had just so happened that Steve had happened upon one of their cats on his way home - Cicero, it turned out its name was, having somehow trapped itself inside a trash can. When he returned the precocious little furball to its moms, Pia was in the kitchen, busily hand-rolling pici. She and Sonia insisted in no uncertain terms that Steve stay for dinner, and, it turned out, a fair few rounds of deceptively potent homemade wine.

"If your mom gets wind of this, you're toast," said Bucky, bolstering Steve's tottering frame with an arm slung firmly around his shoulders. "I'm taking you home."

Steve tried to sing a few more times on the short walk between the Barnes household and Steve's apartment, and he was fairly sure that somewhere underneath his softly scolding tone, Bucky thought it was hilarious. The air was so balmy that night. It seemed to Steve now that the nights were so much balmier back then.

"Try and get some sleep," admonished Bucky, setting Steve gently into bed. "You're gonna feel like hell in the morning."

Steve snuggled himself down. The bed was welcoming and warm, but he wished it would stop moving.

"I can look after myself, you know," protested Steve, as Bucky carefully climbed in beside him.

"I know," said Bucky, draping an arm over him. "But you don't have to. Besides, I'm not going back out at this hour. I'm staying for breakfast. Greasy bacon, runny eggs..."

"Kiss me goodnight, Buck," Steve smiled.

"Don't be a goof," Bucky scoffed.

"I'm serious," beamed Steve. His eyes struggled to focus in the nearly absent light, but it felt very clear to him then that Bucky was the most beautiful person he had ever met, and that he had known this for a very long time, and he really, really wanted to kiss him. He let his hand come to rest quietly on Bucky's cheek. "Kiss me goodnight?"

Bucky went very quiet, then. "I don't think that's... Stevie, you're drunk as a skunk," he said softly. "Get some sleep. Okay."

Steve felt the feather-weight press of Bucky's lips against his forehead, like warm light. Bucky rolled over onto his side.

"Night, Stevie," he said, so softly.

"Night, Buck," said Steve.

Steve thought he heard a sound from Bucky's side of the bed, shaking like he was trying to cough as quietly as possible, but his back was turned and it was dark, and as far as Steve was concerned, the bed was rotating at almost nauseating speed, so Steve held fast to his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut until sleep came.

But sleep came so much more easily then, though the Brooklyn bed was so much smaller than his Wakandan guest room, and nowhere near as soft. He always slept better when Bucky was there. Steve hummed his little tune as he sketched the last shadows of the front steps of the little apartment.

"Buckaroo Barnes, won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight," he sang to himself. "Buckaroo Barnes, won't you come out tonight, and dance by the light of the moon."

Saturday

It was something akin to a palpable pressure weighing down on his limbs and against his chest, the motivation to do _something_ but with nothing to be done, the restlessness of waiting. He was sure that swimming was a terrible choice of exercise, given its tendency to remind him of those less innocuous times he found himself submerged in a body of water. He counted twelve laps before his memories became too loud, and he surfaced with a heavy gasp for air. His phone rang just as he heaved himself out of the shallow end. He quickly wiped his hand down on a soft towel and answered.

"Hey, kiddo," said Natasha.

"Hey Nat," he smiled. It was good to hear from her. "Where are you right now?"

"Sorry Steve," she said. "You never know who's listening."

"I assume this is a secure connection," replied Steve.

"Of course it is," she said. "But still."

"Wish you were here," he told her, leaning back in the awkward deck chair.

"Yeah, me too," she replied. She sounded tired. "What about you, are you okay?"

"Tired," he said, more candidly than he had meant.

"You've been running on adrenaline for a long time," she said. "Sometimes the body doesn't realise how worn out it is until you let it rest. Believe me, I'm tired too. How's Barnes?"

"Bucky's sleeping for the both of us," said Steve.

"This has to be weird for you, I'm sorry," she said. "I wish - just promise me you're taking care of yourself."

"You know? I haven't had a really good night's sleep in years," he said. "At first I just thought the serum made me sleep less, but it turns out we both just slept better when we were sleeping together."

"You and Barnes," said Natasha. "You were lovers? I thought - "

Steve could feel the blush rising, so brightly that he was sure Natasha could hear it.

"Not _sleeping together_ , sleeping together," he clarified. "We slept over at each other's houses more often than not when we were at school, and when we moved out on our own, the apartment was small so... we shared a bed."

"You're sweet," she said. "Sounds cozy."

"I took up a lot less space back then too, remember," he shrugged.

"I still find that really hard to picture."

Steve sat up, all folded in at awkward angles. He did not share easily, but he felt now as though if he stopped talking, he would burst. It was a secure connection, and Natasha was... Nat. "Okay, and there was... once," he said.

"Once?" Natashsa repeated.

"Me and Bucky," he said. "Once, we - "

"Made sweet love?" interjected Natasha.

Steve sighed. "I was going to say we fooled around, but yeah, we, uhh... we had sex, once," he said.

It was an understatement: Steve could recall in perfect detail every whisper and sigh, the way they tangled together so easily, unsteady but sure, and how he almost had almost come just from the way Bucky kissed his neck. He remembered how Bucky's hair was a sleepy, fluffy mess, and how he had never looked more beautiful.

"Oh, wow. Okay," she said. 

"He went off to war the next day," Steve continued. "I think, I think he just needed to blow off some steam, you know? We never had a chance to talk about it, what it meant, and to be honest, back then, with the war, and... I don't know what would have happened if..."

"I just can't get over the fact that people still think you're some kind of Boy Scout."

"I'm not a fucking mascot, Nat," he argued, with a heavy sigh. "I'm just a guy who's trying his best, and I'm entitled to a private life, just like everybody else."

"I know, honey," she said. She knew better than most people, even friends.

"But what about you?" he asked her. "Are you okay, are you safe?"

"I'm fine," she said, and he thought he could hear a little sad chuckle in her voice. "Listen... tell Sam I said... tell him I said hi, yeah?"

"Yeah," agreed Steve.

"But tell him I'm not saying hi to Redwing," she added. Steve smiled.

"He'll hate that," he said.

"I know," said Natasha. "I miss you guys."

"You too, Romanoff."

Sunday

Even in the soft and well-appointed modernist calm of his guest apartments, Steve struggled to will his mind to stop. Bucky had been quiet again that evening; they were now a good two-thirds of the way through the book, and Steve felt reasonably confident that he knew more now about quantum physics than he had when they began.

But his thoughts did not want to stop. They told him that idling here was time better spent doing, but could not think of what. They presented a slideshow consisting of a meticulously organised catalogue of his many failures, as though he had ever forgotten a single one. He tried his best to quiet them. He tried to watch the patterns of light that formed before his closed eyes, until even that measure of concentration was too great.

He felt the mattress shift slightly, as Bucky perched himself at the foot of the bed.

"Hey, sleepyhead," he said.

"You're awake," Steve observed; a rather pointless observation, he thought too late.

"Sorry pal, I'm still asleep," said Bucky. "So are you."

Steve struggled to contain his disappointment, but accepted this in the way that one accepted things in dreams.

"So I'm dreaming," nodded Steve, sitting up against the soft pillows. "Is it normal to be this self-aware that you're dreaming?"

"How the fuck should I know?" asked Bucky. "It's your brain. You should know it a hell of a lot better than I do - or does it not get a lot of use these days?"

"Hey," protested Steve. "I may not be a super-genius, but I'm no slouch. There's no need to be mean."

"I mean, technically if this is your dream, then I'm just a construct of your own brain," shrugged Bucky, "so you're kind of insulting yourself. But if it makes you feel better, why the hell not?"

"Thanks," sighed Steve. Bucky shuffled a little closer to him.

"You know, you can practice kissing on me if you want, too, but if I'm just a figment of your dreaming mind, I'm not sure it isn't almost like... what you get up to by yourself sometimes in the shower, or when you can't sleep..."

"All right, that's enough," Steve blushed.

"... or sometimes, when you wake up early but aren't quite ready to get out of bed - "

"Okay, okay! Come on, Buck." Steve was sure he was blushing such a bright shade of red it stretched right out to his ears.

"Hey, it's okay," reasoned Bucky. "The walls weren't exactly thick in that apartment we used to share, buddy. Do you really think I never overheard you getting in a little batting practice in the bath?"

"All right, already! Jeez," protested Steve, covering his face with his hands. "And anyway, it's totally normal. Almost everybody needs a little... batting practice, sometimes."

"Wait, what if this is my dream and you're a figment of my dreaming brain," puzzled Bucky. "I wonder what _that_ would mean?"

"But I'm pretty sure I'm really me," reasoned Steve.

"But so do I," countered Bucky.

"But you're in stasis," replied Steve. "Can you dream in stasis?"

Bucky thought about this one for a moment.

"I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "I don't think I ever used to, but... it's all blurry to me now. But this time feels different."

"Okay, but if this was your dream, why would you propose practice kissing?"

"Maybe I want to kiss you too," Bucky smiled.

"Wow," said Steve, shaking his head with a soft chuckle. "My subconscious is fucking _cruel_."

Bucky's hand settled on Steve's shoulder. "Yeah, you've gotta stop doing that, pal," he said. "Being kind to everybody but yourself. You're the bravest and the best person I've ever known. Who wouldn't want to kiss that? God fucking knows I don't deserve your kindness, but you do. You deserve kindness, and happiness, and rest."

"Look, I know you know why I'm here, now, how the plane went down, and I... Goddamn it, Buck, I don't know if it was the right thing at the time, but you're here now, and I'm here, and we can't change how we got here or what happened in between, but... not many people get this kind of a second chance. I love you, Buck," he said, his gaze unfixed into the distance. "I mean I'm _in_ love with you, and I didn't know what that meant or what to do with it for a long time, but what I do know is I'll do whatever it takes to give you the kind of happiness you deserve. And you deserve so much happiness."

"Stevie... I love you too," said Bucky, leaning into him.

"You're not just saying that because this is my dream?" asked Steve.

"No, stupid," scoffed Bucky, giving him a gentle shove. "Way to ruin a perfectly tender moment."

"Maybe _that's_ my true superpower," mused Steve.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Bucky shrugged, "there's a good 98% chance we're not going to remember any of this when we wake up."

"Is that a scientifically proven percentage?" asked Steve.

"Nah man, I'm talking shit," Bucky replied.

"Listen, I know none of this is real, but... thanks for being here, Buck," said Steve. "I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when all this is done, I don't know where we're going to end up, but I know I'm not ever going anywhere without you."

"Glad to hear it," said Bucky, pressing a long, soft kiss into Steve's shoulder. "It's time to wake up, punk."

Monday

"Hey Buck."

"Hey Steve."


End file.
